David Crandall
06-13-2008, 10:22 PM
I haven't been here in a while, but Bozie's history is all over this board, for those who want to look for it.
Here's the synopsis.
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h217/Wolverines98/bozie/IMG_1813.jpg
In the first year after rescuing Bozie a little before she turned 9, we dealt with:
Rotten teeth
Morbid obesity (yeah, we knew this one when we got her)
Heartworm (the previous owners apparently missed a dose of preventive)
Mast cell tumors (the first one found during the tooth extraction)
Benign fatty tumors (we were always worried about a recurrence of MCT)
Knee, hip, and back arthritis (spurred on by the obesity)
Dog-dog aggression
That last one didn’t show itself until after she was light enough to move easily. It made our decision to get a companion for our first dog a mistake in retrospect. It was bad enough that we had a national aggression expert who lives near here work with her/us; she video-taped Bozie for some behaviors to show in her seminars.
There were a lot of times we came really close to giving her up, but there were two big problems with that: we’re tremendously stubborn and we realized that an old, fat, heartworm positive, cancer positive, arthritic, aggressive dog going into rescue was a death sentence. In a lot of ways, our lives would be a lot easier if we had. Do you know how hard it is to get a dog to lose weight when she’s not allowed to exercise because of heartworm treatment? Or how much fun it is to keep two dogs that live in the same house constantly separated for 5 years?
Before she was attacked by a neighbor’s dog while we were on a walk (about 2 years ago), we had gotten her aggression under enough control that she could be introduced to strange dogs just fine; though she never really enjoyed being around other dogs (we didn’t ever get to the point where she wouldn’t attack our other pup).
Over the last year, it was worsening arthritis, chronic UTIs, kidney failure, a vulvar tumor found during her last tooth cleaning (maybe the cause of the UTIs), anemia and an arrhythmia that would cause her to periodically faint; I’m sure there’s more that I’m forgetting. We were startling her all the time because her hearing and her eyesight were going (except strangers coming over). Her smell is not nearly what it used to be either. It was taking her 5 minutes to eat, which is a long ways from the 10-15 seconds it used to take (literally). Her arthritis got so bad that she was in constant pain. Most of the time at the end, she couldn’t get up without help. And once she was up, she’d avoid lying back down because the motion hurts so much. She didn’t have much strength or feeling in her hind legs anymore. She was getting shots for her arthritis. They used to keep her going for about a month, then for a few weeks, then for a week; now not at all. When we would go up to bed, we’d call her and ask if she wanted to go. On the good days, she would come to the bottom of the stairs and attempt to go up (then we’d either boost her or carry her). On the bad days, she wouldn’t even try. It’s been a while since she even attempted it; she would just plod sadly to her downstairs sleeping area. I was going to stay there with her last night, but we decided just to carry her to the bedroom one last time.
She gave us 5 ½ very interesting years; I figure that’s pretty good considering that the reason we didn’t change her name was that we didn’t think she’d survive that first year. It would have been better for everyone involved if she were an only dog, but we did the best we could. She’s made us better dog parents and probably better people. She adored my wife, and would follow her anywhere as long as she was physically able, but she hasn’t really able to for a while; she still tried. This is the hardest decision that we’ve had to make. She hasn’t given us those clear signs that so many dogs give (stop eating completely, can’t walk at all, stop trying, etc); I guess it’s just her last shot at being difficult. I wonder if we did this too soon; but then I look at the last paragraph, and I wonder if we waited too long. I think that we could have physically kept her alive for quite a bit longer, but we’d be doing this for our benefit, not hers. More importantly, since we could no longer effectively control her pain, we decided it wasn’t fair to force her to continue to suffer. I’m proud that we got her passed 14, and I like to think we’ve given her a good post-rescue life and returned a little of the benefit we got.
One of the early posts about her:
http://www.doggiebagonline. com/forum/showthread.php?t=241 9&highlight=bozie
Some old shots of "fat Bozie":
http://www.geocities.com/lzaddock/bozie.html
Here's the synopsis.
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h217/Wolverines98/bozie/IMG_1813.jpg
In the first year after rescuing Bozie a little before she turned 9, we dealt with:
Rotten teeth
Morbid obesity (yeah, we knew this one when we got her)
Heartworm (the previous owners apparently missed a dose of preventive)
Mast cell tumors (the first one found during the tooth extraction)
Benign fatty tumors (we were always worried about a recurrence of MCT)
Knee, hip, and back arthritis (spurred on by the obesity)
Dog-dog aggression
That last one didn’t show itself until after she was light enough to move easily. It made our decision to get a companion for our first dog a mistake in retrospect. It was bad enough that we had a national aggression expert who lives near here work with her/us; she video-taped Bozie for some behaviors to show in her seminars.
There were a lot of times we came really close to giving her up, but there were two big problems with that: we’re tremendously stubborn and we realized that an old, fat, heartworm positive, cancer positive, arthritic, aggressive dog going into rescue was a death sentence. In a lot of ways, our lives would be a lot easier if we had. Do you know how hard it is to get a dog to lose weight when she’s not allowed to exercise because of heartworm treatment? Or how much fun it is to keep two dogs that live in the same house constantly separated for 5 years?
Before she was attacked by a neighbor’s dog while we were on a walk (about 2 years ago), we had gotten her aggression under enough control that she could be introduced to strange dogs just fine; though she never really enjoyed being around other dogs (we didn’t ever get to the point where she wouldn’t attack our other pup).
Over the last year, it was worsening arthritis, chronic UTIs, kidney failure, a vulvar tumor found during her last tooth cleaning (maybe the cause of the UTIs), anemia and an arrhythmia that would cause her to periodically faint; I’m sure there’s more that I’m forgetting. We were startling her all the time because her hearing and her eyesight were going (except strangers coming over). Her smell is not nearly what it used to be either. It was taking her 5 minutes to eat, which is a long ways from the 10-15 seconds it used to take (literally). Her arthritis got so bad that she was in constant pain. Most of the time at the end, she couldn’t get up without help. And once she was up, she’d avoid lying back down because the motion hurts so much. She didn’t have much strength or feeling in her hind legs anymore. She was getting shots for her arthritis. They used to keep her going for about a month, then for a few weeks, then for a week; now not at all. When we would go up to bed, we’d call her and ask if she wanted to go. On the good days, she would come to the bottom of the stairs and attempt to go up (then we’d either boost her or carry her). On the bad days, she wouldn’t even try. It’s been a while since she even attempted it; she would just plod sadly to her downstairs sleeping area. I was going to stay there with her last night, but we decided just to carry her to the bedroom one last time.
She gave us 5 ½ very interesting years; I figure that’s pretty good considering that the reason we didn’t change her name was that we didn’t think she’d survive that first year. It would have been better for everyone involved if she were an only dog, but we did the best we could. She’s made us better dog parents and probably better people. She adored my wife, and would follow her anywhere as long as she was physically able, but she hasn’t really able to for a while; she still tried. This is the hardest decision that we’ve had to make. She hasn’t given us those clear signs that so many dogs give (stop eating completely, can’t walk at all, stop trying, etc); I guess it’s just her last shot at being difficult. I wonder if we did this too soon; but then I look at the last paragraph, and I wonder if we waited too long. I think that we could have physically kept her alive for quite a bit longer, but we’d be doing this for our benefit, not hers. More importantly, since we could no longer effectively control her pain, we decided it wasn’t fair to force her to continue to suffer. I’m proud that we got her passed 14, and I like to think we’ve given her a good post-rescue life and returned a little of the benefit we got.
One of the early posts about her:
http://www.doggiebagonline. com/forum/showthread.php?t=241 9&highlight=bozie
Some old shots of "fat Bozie":
http://www.geocities.com/lzaddock/bozie.html